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Missouri Compromise
During James Monroe's presidency, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors was Harriet Tubman, born a slave in Maryland in 1820 or 1821. Shortly after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Tubman resolved to become a conductor on the Underground Railroad. In all, she made 19 trips back to the South and is said to have helped 300 slaves, including her own parents. -
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail stretched from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. It was blazed in 1836 by two Methodist missionaries named Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. -
Sante Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail, which stretched 780 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe in the Mexican province of New Mexico. -
San Felipe De Austin
Austin’s father, Moses Austin, had received a land grant from Spain,
and continued carry out his father’s project. The main settlement of the colony was named San Felipe de Austin, in Stephen’s honor. By 1825, Austin had issued 297 land grants to the group that later became known as Texas’s Old Three Hundred. -
Mexico Abolishes slavery
Furthermore, many of the settlers were Southerners,
who had brought slaves with them to Texas. Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1829, insisted in vain that the Texans free their slaves. Meanwhile, Mexican politics had become increasingly unstable. -
Stephen F. Austin Jail?
While Austin was on his way home, Santa Anna had Austin imprisoned for inciting revolution. After Santa Anna suspended local powers in Texas and other Mexican states, several rebellions broke out, including one that would be known as the Texas Revolution. -
The Liberator
William Lloyd Garrison was Active in religious reform movements
in Massachusetts, so he became the editor of an antislavery paper in 1828. Three years later he established his own paper, The Liberator, to deliver an uncompromising demand. -
Texas Revolution
After Santa Anna suspended local powers in Texas and other Mexican states, several rebellions broke out, including one that would be known as the Texas Revolution.From February 23, 1836, Santa Anna and his troops attacked the rebels holed up in the Alamo. On March 2, 1836, as the battle for the Alamo raged, Texans declared their independence from Mexico. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
In August 1831, Nat Turner and more than 50 followers attacked four
plantations and killed about 60 whites. Whites eventually captured and executed many members of the group, including Turner. -
Manifest Destiny
The phrase “manifest destiny” expressed the belief that the United States was ordained to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican and Native American territory. -
Underground Railroad
As time went on, free African Americans and white abolitionists developed a secret network of people who would, at great risk to themselves, hide fugitive slaves. The system of escape routes they used became known as the Underground Railroad. “ -
Texas joins U.S.
In March 1845, angered by U.S.-Texas negotiation on annexation, the Mexican government recalled its ambassador from Washington. On December 29, 1845, Texas entered the Union. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande started off the fighting and was followed by a series of U.S. victories. -
The North Star
Hoping that abolition could be achieved without violence, Douglass broke with Garrison, who believed that abolition justified whatever means were necessary to achieve it.
In 1847, Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper. He named The North Star, after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
On February 2,
1848, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Mexico agreed to the Rio Grande as the border between Texas and Mexico and ceded the New Mexico and California territories to the United States. The United States agreed to pay $15 million for the Mexican cession, which included present day California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. -
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay worked to shape a compromise that both the North
and the South could accept.To please the North, the compromise provided that California be admitted to the Union as a free state. To please the South, the compromise proposed a new and more effective fugitive slave law. To placate both sides, a provision allowed popular sovereignty, the right to vote for or against slavery. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The harsh terms of the Fugitive Slave Act surprised many people. Under the law, alleged fugitive slaves were not entitled to a trial by jury. In addition, anyone convicted of helping a fugitive was liable for a fine of $1,000 and imprisonment for up to six months. Infuriated by the Fugitive Slave Act, some Northerners resisted it by organizing “vigilance committees” to send endangered African Americans to safety in Canada. Others resorted to violence to rescue fugitive slaves. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As a young girl, Stowe had watched boats filled with people on their way to be sold at slave markets. Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressed her lifetime hatred of slavery. The book stirred Northern abolitionists to increase their protests against the Fugitive Slave Act, -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Douglas introduced a bill in Congress on January 23, 1854,
that would divide the area into two territories: Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the south. If passed, the bill would repeal the Missouri Compromise and establish popular sovereignty for
both territories. After months of struggle, the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law in 1854 -
Dread Scott vs Sandford
Dread Scott was a slave in Missouri, and he was suing for his freedom. According to the ruling, Scott lacked any legal standing to sue in federal court because he was not, and never could be, a citizen. -
John's Brown Raid on Harpers Ferry
On the night of October 16, 1859, he led a band of 21 men, black and white, into Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). His aim was to seize the federal arsenal there and start a general slave uprising. -
Stephen Douglas n Abraham Lincoln
The two men’s positions were simple and consistent. Neither wanted slavery in the territories, but they disagreed on how to keep it out. Douglas believed deeply in popular sovereignty. Lincoln, on the other hand, believed that slavery was immoral. Douglas won the Senate seat, but his response had widened the split in the Democratic Party. As for Lincoln, some Republicans began thinking of him as an excellent candidate for the presidency in 1860 -
Abraham Lincoln President
As the 1860 presidential election approached, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln appeared to be moderate in his views. Although he pledged to halt the further spread of slavery, he also tried to reassure Southerners that a Republican administration would not interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves. -
Formation on the Confederacy
South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In February 1861, delegates from the secessionist states met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they formed the Confederate States of America, or Confederacy. Jefferson
davis was the president. -
Attack on Fort Sumter
March 4, 1861, attack was on Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston harbor. In April, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded, bringing the number of Confederate states to eleven. The western counties of Virginia opposed slavery, so they seceded from Virginia and were admitted into the Union as West Virginia in 1863. The four remaining states,Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union. -
Battle of Antietam
The two sides fought on September 17 near a creek called the
Antietam. The clash proved to be the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with casualties totaling more than 26,000. Union won this battle. -
Battle of Bull Eun
Near the little creek of Bull Run, just 25 miles from Washington, D.C. The Confederates held firm, inspired by General Thomas J. Jackson, and there he eanred the nickname Stonewall Jackson. In the afternoon Confederate reinforcements helped win the first Southern victory. -
Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation did not free any slaves immediately because it applied only to areas behind Confederate lines, outside Union control. Nevertheless, for many, the proclamation gave the war a moral purpose by turning the struggle into a fight to free the slaves. It also ensured that compromise was no longer possible. -
Conscription
As the fighting intensified, heavy casualties and widespread desertions led each side to impose conscription, a draft that forced men to serve in the army. -
Income Tax
As the Northern economy grew, Congress decided to help pay for the war by collecting the nation’s first income tax, a tax that takes a specified percentage of an individual’s income. -
Gettysburg Address
In November 1863, a ceremony was held to dedicate
a cemetery in Gettysburg. According to some contemporary historians, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address “remade America.” People said the speech helped the country to realize that it was not just a collection of individual states; it was one unified nation. -
Battle at Vickburg
Union general Ulysses S. Grant fought to take Vicksburg, one of the two remaining Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi River. Vicksburg itself was particularly important because it rested on bluffs above the river from which guns could control all water traffic. Spring of 1863, Grant began by weakening the Confederate defenses that protected Vicksburg. City fell on July 4. Port Hudson, Louisiana, the Mississippi, all fell The Confederacy was cut in two. -
Sherman's March
In March 1864, Grant in turn appointed William Tecumseh Sherman as commander of the military division of the Mississippi. These two appointments would change the course of the war. By mid-November he had burned most of Atlanta. After reaching the ocean, Sherman’s forces followed by 25,000 former slaves turned north to help Grant “wipe out Lee.” -
Battle at Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg began on July 1 when Confederate soldiers led by A.P. hill encountered several brigades of Union cavalry led by John Buford. By the end of the first day of fighting, 90,000 Union troops under the command of General George Meade had taken the field against 75,000 Confederates, led by General Lee. Despite the devastation, Northerners won. -
13th Amendment
After some political maneuvering, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified at the end of 1865. The U.S. Constitution stated, Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States. -
Appomattox Court
On April 9, 1865, in a Virginia town called Appomattox Court House, Lee and Grant met at a private home to arrange a Confederate surrender. Grant paroled Lee’s soldiers and sent them home with their possessions and three days’ worth of rations. After four long years, the Civil War was over -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln died on April 15. After the shooting, the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, a 26-year-old actor and Southerner, then leaped down from the presidential box to the stage and escaped. -
Abolition
Abolition, the movement to abolish slavery, became the most important of a series of reform movements in America.
